


This Just and Moral World

by Isis



Category: The Divine Cities Series - Robert Jackson Bennett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Gen, Gods, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12430089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: The Divinity Sempros makes a different choice.





	This Just and Moral World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merit/gifts).



The telegram is short and completely nonsensical. 

BULIKOV GONE

"What the fuck?" asks Minister Mulaghesh. The rest of the Military Council is a bit more polite; Prime Minister Gadkari glares at her from her seat at the head of the table, and pointedly thanks the runner from the telegraph office, while General Noor speculates on what "gone" means, exactly, under the circumstances.

While the Council debates what "gone" means, exactly, under the circumstances, another runner comes in with a second telegram.

DEVEROV GONE

Deverov's a city in Ahanashtan, and not a small one. Mulaghesh drops the cigarillo she's been idly turning in her hands. Fortunately for the smooth wooden table, it's not lit. "What the _fuck_?" 

This time Gadkari does not glare. She purses her lips and says, mildly, "The Continent would appear to be at war."

"But with whom?" asks General Sakthi. "Not us. The Dreylings, perhaps?"

The answer comes almost immediately. The first runner, who had immediately gone back to the telegraph office, is back in the room, red-faced and out of breath. He deposits a third telegram onto the table in front of the Prime Minister.

UNMAKING OVERTAKING TAALVASHTAN. PUT TO SEA BUT ANOMALY MOVING FAST.

Gadkari frowns. "Unmaking?"

Another runner arrives and drops her telegram beside the latest one.

NO CONTACT VOORTYASHTAN

"Fucking Divinities," mutters Mulaghesh. Of the group gathered around the long table, she is the only one with intimate knowledge of what a Divinity is – what it is to _be_ a Divinity – and she alone has grasped the implications. They aren't good.

General Noor says something to one of the aides, who moves to the wall map and starts marking locations with coloured flags.

"There's no point," says Mulaghesh. "We're all doomed."

"The Divinities have always been limited to the Continent," says Gadkari. "There's no reason to believe –" She breaks off to take yet another telegram from yet another runner. Her face blanches as she reads it.

"Not the Continent," guesses Mulaghesh.

Gadkari holds the paper so the rest of them can see it. 

NO CONTACT DREYLI

"The Dreyling Shores," says General Noor, and the aide obediently places another flag on the map.

"It's moving north," says Minister Liatha.

"And south," Sakthi observes grimly. "Very quickly."

"Then we don't have much time," says Gadkari. "Generals, what can we mobilize within the hour?"

As it turns out, they have even less time than that.

* * *

Turyin Mulaghesh grumbles as she stuffs herself into an appropriate dress for the evening's official reception. The only reason she's putting herself through this is that the food at these things is always excellent, and the wine even better. Of course, as a government minister, she's expected to make an appearance, but that reason ranks at the bottom of her list.

Really, she'd rather just go to bed early. She's an old woman with arthritis in her hips, and she slept poorly the previous night. It was the recurring dream, the bad one, the one in which she is in a battle on the wall of some great city. There is a great flash and a jolt of pain in her wrist, and when she looks she sees that her hand is gone, great gouts of blood spurting from the end of her arm. But then her arm is suddenly whole. Her hand is restored, though it aches terribly, and it is holding a sword that shines so brightly she can't bear to look at it. When she wakes from this dream her hand still throbs with pain.

The dream makes no sense. She's an administrator, not a soldier. She had not been in the army. She had never been in battle. There were very few battles, for in a just world there was no need to fight. On the few occasions when someone with the power to act unjustly did so, Sempros ensured that they were swiftly brought to face Her Divine justice. Everyone got what they deserved. 

And yet Mulaghesh has had this dream from time to time, ever since she can remember. Sometimes she has wondered, when she's woken from this dream, why there are _few_ battles; why aren't there _no_ battles, in this just and moral world?

She arrives at the great ballroom and immediately corrals the first server she sees to order a large cocktail. Thus fortified, she strides through the room, greeting the other ministers and dignitaries. The delegation from the Dreyling Shores arrives soon after. This is the reason for the reception; their _dauvkind_ is on an official visit to Saypur, the first in some years. There will be meetings and discussions over the next several days, formal occasions that will be even less enjoyable than this reception due to the lack of alcohol, but this event is intended to, as they say, break the conversational ice.

The _dauvkind_ is an old man, older than Mulaghesh, and very, very tall. The entire Dreyling delegation are tall, but he towers above them all. His bristly beard is yellow, streaked with grey. He shakes hands and smiles, shakes hands and smiles, and looks as though he'd like to be somewhere else. Mulaghesh knows the feeling.

The Prime Minister taps her glass for quiet, and when the room has obeyed, she speaks the words of the traditional invocation, calling upon Sempros to guide them. Sempros, goddess of time, ruler of the past and of the future. Sempros, who rights wrongs and ensures justice. 

A sudden flare of pain in her hand makes Mulaghesh wince. It's like the pain in her dream, but worse. The cocktail glass drops from her hand and shatters on the ground. She looks around guiltily, but nobody is looking at her. Everyone is looking at the _dauvkind_ , who has grasped one hand in the other and is grimacing with pain. 

_Huh_ , she thinks.

Maybe the week's meetings won't be boring, after all.

* * *

It's a few days before she can engineer a chance to speak to the _dauvkind_ alone, but when she does, she doesn't waste time.

"Do you have nightmares, Mr. Harkvaldsson?"

"That is hardly a question I would expect a Saypuri minister to ask," he says, but his eyes hold an interested gleam. Which is more than they have during the entire afternoon of meetings.

"I saw you during the invocation. Do you dream of your hand being chopped off, too?"

"No," he says, and she feels a stab of disappointment. She shouldn't have added that _too_ ; that was a concession, a vulnerability. Now she has nothing, she thinks, but then, surprising her, he says, "It's a rock I dream of. A small, gray marble with the sign of a scale etched into it."

"A marble?"

"It is placed in my hand. It weighs more than a mountain. My hand bleeds and bleeds and I think of nothing but death. In my dream I have lost my wife and my children. I have lost my country. I have only a wish to die."

It is nothing like her dream. She sighs. "Well, it was worth a try, anyway. Sorry to have kept you."

He nods, and opens the door, and they step out of the meeting room...

...onto a vast, white plane of nothingness.

* * *

A woman stands before them. A woman, and not a woman; she is a Divinity, _the_ Divinity, Mulaghesh intuitively knows. She is Sempros. 

She is time, all of it, seconds and minutes and years and centuries. She is clothed in every birth and every death, every sunrise, every sunset. She is beautiful and terrible, the entire world compressed and encompassed in one figure that looks almost human but is entirely something else. She holds them both in one vast hand and looks upon them with an ineffable sadness that is almost tangible.

"YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS," she says.

"You're right, I don't," says Mulaghesh. 

Beside her Sigrud je Harkvaldsson says, hesitantly, "Tatyana?"

Mulaghesh frowns. "Who is Tatyana?

"I don't know. But I have a feeling that she has said this to me before."

"Tatyana said this to you?" She shakes her head. She doesn't know any Tatyana – that's not a Saypuri name – but there is something familiar about it, something just at the edge of her memory that skitters away when she tries to think about it. 

None of it makes any sense. The Divinity Sempros is before her – is holding her in her palm – and the _dauvkind_ is beside her, and she has no idea where the hell she is but she knows instinctively that this is _important_. Whatever it is.

"I AM NOT TATYANA. I AM NOT MALWINA. THEY WERE ALVOS AND TULVOS AND I AM SEMPROS."

An agony shoots through her hand again, and beside her she can tell that Harkvaldsson's in pain as well. She glances over to see him grasping his own hand, his face contorted.

"I HAVE REMADE THE WORLD," says the goddess. "I HAVE REFORGED CREATION."

"And yet we remember," says Mulaghesh recklessly.

"VOORTYA IS NO MORE. KOLKAN IS NO MORE."

_Voortya._ The name strikes a deep chord in her, something at her heart. She remembers her dream of holding a sword, a shining sword, the sword of righteousness and justice and the soul of battle. 

"I was touched by the Finger of Kolkan," says Harkvaldsson softly. He sounds as though he is in his own dream.

"THEY ARE NO MORE. ONLY I, SEMPROS, REMAIN. I HAVE UNMADE THEIR WORLD AND FORGED A NEW, BETTER WORLD."

"A just and moral world," murmurs Mulaghesh.

Harkvaldsson looks up at the Divinity looming above them. "How just and moral is it really, Taty?"

"HOW DARE YOU."

"No, really. Do you think Shara would have approved?"

_Shara_. A shiver goes through her. How would this Dreyling man know Ashara Komayd? Mulaghesh knew Shara, or at least, she thought she did. But the Shara she remembers – a clever girl, a thoughtful politician – is overlaid in her head, somehow, with another Shara. A Shara in exile, on the Continent, chasing miracles and searching out truths. A Shara who is beside her in the battle on the wall, as her hand is severed from her wrist. A Shara who sought out Divine children throughout the world, who adopted one of them, a Continental girl, named....

"Tatyana Komayd," says Mulaghesh.

The goddess screams. Her scream blots out the world.

* * *

Prime Minister Gadkari looks relieved as she reads the latest telegram.

BLACK TOWER GONE. WALLS OF BULIKOV GONE.

"Well, if it _was_ a Continental insurrection, it's over now."

"Except for the sightings of the late Ashara Komayd," says one of the generals. "Do we have any idea what that's about?"

Everyone turns to look at Minister Mulaghesh, who shrugs. "We never had any idea what any of this was about. The walls of Bulikov were the biggest miraculous thing ever. Either a Divinity brought them down, or the Divinity that created them was destroyed."

"But what about Shara?"

"Who the fuck knows?" Her voice is loud and harsh in the small room, and the other ministers tighten their lips and shake their heads slightly. She doesn't care; they should be used to her by now. "She took an interest in the Divine. Maybe they took an interest in her."

She flexes the metal hand that Signe had made for her. She feels pain in it sometimes, as though it is still flesh. She knows what it's like to have a Divinity's interest. She wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

But she survived Voortya, and Sigrud survived Kolkan. She hopes Sigrud survived what happened in Bulikov, whatever it was. Whoever it was.

_Sempros_. The word bubbles up from somewhere and flits across her mind, then is gone. She has no idea where it came from, what it means. 

It doesn't really matter. The walls of Bulikov are gone. Maybe the Divinities are gone, too. 

She can only hope.


End file.
